With high enough DMG (any Orc/Human/Halfling with conversions, Rogue w/wo conversions, Berserker -II-, anyone with a symbol, etc.) having a repeatable death protection on a glyph gives too much power for little to no investment.

I feel this was only a serious issue on the first generation of vicious levels, which had relatively low-HP bosses with obscene damage output and the occasional nasty status ailment. Of course CYDSTEPP was going to dominate them.

Furthermore, I've already stated that I believe it's the Avatar's Symbol and the Rogue that are the problems, not the glyph. High attack power is a dominant approach regardless of defensive measures you utilize.

The whole point of repeatable glyphs is being able to divert your mana through them to somehow convert it into damage. You can do this with BURNDAYRAZ, PISORF, HALPMEH, and even BYSSEPS in a pinch. Different monsters/class/prep combos may cause you to prefer one type of glyph over others.

HALPMEH blows CYDSTEPP out of the water for fighting tank bosses like Frank or SMM. PISORF is roughly on par with CYDSTEPP (provided you can get things lined up) for taking on Bleaty. The only cases where CYDSTEPP went nuts were those crazy-statted high-damage/low-HP vicious bosses in the Demonic Library and Namtar's Lair, or comboed with the over-specialized rogue or avatar's symbol.

Either JJ, the gnome or the warlord's the issue IMO, not cydstep.

Two separate issues; JJ Gnomes and the Warlord.

The Warlord currently gets classic CYDSTEPP while everyone else has gimped CYDSTEPP. He's basically got an entirely different spell at his disposal and it simply cannot be treated the same way.

With the JJ Gnome, it's more a matter of the obscene amounts of mana he can pick up for virtually no cost. For every mana potion he loses, his max mana rises fast enough to more than offset his losses. For everyone else the lost mana potions add an extra sting to the trade, but for the gnome it's almost inconsequential.

I, never having any love for either Warlord ot the cydstepp rogue, and positively hating playing dedicated cydsteppers because of misclick issues

Dedicated CYDSTEPP'ers were never really good outside of Rogue and Warlord anyways. Heck, without Avatar's Symbol the Warlord is only passable as a dedicated CYDSTEPP'er. Seriously, the problem is the Rogue and Avatar's Symbol, it's not the glyph. Go boot up the alpha and try to play as a CYDSTEPP'er Priest. It doesn't work well unless you draw a boss like Aeq or Gharbad.

Fact still remains that the six mini-bosses deal about 100 damage and you've gotta start fighting them early. That's gunna encourage CYDSTEPP'ing.

I'm not sure if Avatar's Symbol needs a complete rework, but in its current state it's basically only usable for CYDSTEPP'ers. At very least its activation threshold needs to be raised because anyone below 25% health is going to die if a strong monster so much as sneezes at them...

Tomithy is still really weak on his own because his stats are so pathetic, but you put him in a lineup with other bosses he starts breaking resist-based approaches. He hasn't really gotten harder on most levels, but on Naga City he's vastly increased its difficulty.